The old mattress is gone. I dropped it off at the recycling center today. Tomorrow or Tuesday I should find out if my buyer here in Illinois is a done deal. Then I should make it to Arkansas by Friday. Poop happens sometimes, so there is that. You just never know.
The scene out my back door today
So while I'm on the cusp of a new era in my life, I'm leaving an old one behind. I've been at my current place since August of 2015. Might not seem like a long time for a lot of folks, but around 2 years is par for the course in my history since college. That partially explains why I've never been married, probably.
Since I graduated college in 1992, the longest I've spent in one place has been five years. That was in an apartment in Peoria from 1999 to 2004. After college in 1992 it was back to the Peoria area living in three different places from 1992 to 1994. Then I spent a year living out of a suitcase working for Marriott helping open new hotels. That was pretty cool spending 3-4 weeks at a time all over the US. And in between hotel openings I was based in Atlanta (Marrieta), also pretty cool.
A hotel I helped opened in Evansville, IN
I got my own hotel in Johnson City, Tennessee and was there for a couple years. After that it was off to Chicago (Evanston) for another hotel gig for a couple years. Then I landed back in Peoria in 1999, where I spent 5 years until I headed to Chicago for a year. Right before I moved to Chicago in 2005 was when I found out I had Parkinson's Disease. Hindsight, maybe I shoulda moved out to the country then.
I was actually in Chicago this time, my studio apartment was in the Wrigleyville area and I worked downtown at Congress and Dearborn. Taking a bus and the L twice daily five days a week in the freezing winter and muggy summer while Young On-Set Parkinson's is starting to kick in? Never again!!!!
From Chicago it was off to the Seattle area for three years, then down to Sacramento California for more than a year. I had high hopes for California, but that went up in smoke.
My minimalist place in Sacramento
The next three years, until I landed my current mobile home in Illinois, I was technically homeless.
I wasn't a sleeping in the alleys level of homeless, but I was a couch hopping for a month or two level of homeless. I was splitting time in various places between Arkansas and Illinois. By my own choice, there were three different times I lived out of my nice two-room tent for a month at a time. It was nice just dropping out and not imposing on anyone for a while.
I couldn't go flip burgers at McDonalds again, so it took me a few years to be able to buy a mobile home and piece together enough income to sustain it for a couple years. With a stable environment to work from, I was able to turn that into my 2.8 acre homestead in Arkansas.
When I'm finally out of Illinois this week, I'll do one more couch hop in Arkansas until I can get that old mobile home in very basic living condition. Hopefully no more than a couple weeks until the real fun begins.
So that's where I've been and this is where I'm at. I just got rid of my old mattress today, about 5 years past it's expiration date, and I'll be sleeping on an air mattress until I leave for Arkansas. From there, the beginning of the Bobblehead Homestead era.
Current condition. Out with the old, in with the temporary.
It wouldn't surprise me if three years from now I'm moving along to somewhere else. That's kind of how my life tends to flow. If so, I'll just hope I'm moving on to bigger and better things. Wish me luck :)
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